Boeing and GE Comebacks Get a Covid Setback
With the global pandemic wreaking havoc on the aerospace industry, both companies are bracing for a lower-growth future.
For Boeing and GE, the reckoning from the coronavirus outbreak has been severe.
Photographers: James Redmond, Aaron M. Sprecher/AFP via Getty Images, Bloomberg
It would be hard for things to get much worse in commercial aerospace, an industry hit particularly hard by the global Covid-19 pandemic. Sober tones and a slew of writedowns out of industry stalwarts Boeing Co. and General Electric Co. provided more evidence of just how dour the outlook is from here.
Second-quarter results from the two companies on Wednesday were predictably bleak for a period that included the worst of the coronavirus slump in air travel and a rush to ground unneeded planes, retire older models and cancel orders for new ones. The best that could be said is that the nearly $8 billion in cash that Boeing and GE burned through collectively in the quarter wasn’t quite as terrible as analysts had feared. GE at least indicated it expected a sequential improvement in overall company cash flow in the second half of the year, with a return to positive numbers by 2021.